Regarding the fanon issues, there are so many of them that you really dislike, and no matter how well written the story might be, those particular fanon things will never set right with you (grin).
I'm thinking that the real history versus 'romance' history issue might be one of education. I kinda hate to use that term, because that implies that some people who read romance novels, especially Regency ones, might not be educated. What I mean is that there are people out there who know how to do research. People who were the ones in school who were always looking things up. The people who would go to a library and spend nearly as much time in the encyclopedia/reference area as in the fiction one. Then you have the people who weren't dumb, but didn't put forth the effort to learn more on their own. The ones who want their history handed to them, instead of having to go looking for it on their own. For people born and/or raised in the internet age, these would be the ones who have the 'it's on the internet, it must be true' mentality, regardless of the subject.
So, yes, SOME people who read Regency romance might come away thinking that they've been reading 'real' history. But, some will also be approaching it from the entertainment angle - they read for the pleasure, for the escape element. I do think that in the past 10 years or so, a lot of people have moved away from the escapism aspect of novels, TV shows and movies. They want things to be realistic and accurate. Movies get picked apart because an exploding ship in space made a sound. There's no creative license allowed, or perhaps not allowed, but not welcomed. And, I'm somewhat guilty of that. I've lost count of how many hours I've spent researching things that ended up being barely mentioned in a story, just because I wanted to be accurate (yes, I am that anal).
With Chris, I don't automatically associate being married with a child as more straight than gay. This is probably because over the years, I've met a few gay men who had been married and had kids. Gay, and not bi-sexual. For each of the men, they pretty much knew they were gay, but were conforming to what society/family/church expected of them, and so they married. I would expect that a similar attitude would have been present with many men in the 1800s - with some repressing their attraction to other men, and others sneaking around while being 'happily' married. And then you'd have the confirmed bachelors, who never seemed to go courting, but instead were loving and diligent sons, staying unmarried so they could take care of their parents. Or the men who found themselves giving in to society and marrying women who were flat as boards and more mannish in their mannerisms. When dealing with other time periods, we always run the risk of viewing it through modern lenses - as a genealogist, I run into that. There are some prominent genealogists who I look up to, and they all have versions of the same thing: that you cannot understand the past unless you know the context of the past. Why were records created at a certain time, what rights did women have when it came to owning property or inheriting, what rights did children born out-of-wedlock have? Answers to those questions are going to be different depending on not only where the events are happening, but also when they're happening.
Chris Larabee of Indiana (going with the idea that that is where he was from), by what we can tell of how he behaves and interacts with others, would have been brought up expected to sow some wild oats, then settle down, get married and have a family, preferably on the family farm. Buck was not raised with those expectations - his mother's occupation ensured that as long as he remained in the same geographic area, Buck would never be viewed as suitable marriage material. If Josiah had really been a Catholic priest, then marriage would have been off the table for him, and outside of a few musings and gazing at Maude and Emma, Josiah seems to be more non-sexual. I think you'd pegged it pretty well that Josiah fell more in love with the image of Emma, than with Emma, and has probably never been with a woman. J. D. would have been considered good marriage material, as would Nathan. Vin would not, nor would Ezra (in the eyes of society as a whole).
As for the 'sliding scale', I believe it's there, and I do agree with you on the chemistry aspect. But, and that's a big BUT, whether or not that chemistry would make someone move into sexual attraction/love/committed relationship depends on so many other variables. For instance, I dearly love my BFF. I've known her since I was 12, and I'm now in my early 50s. But, if she was a male, I would not be sexually interested in her, nor romantically interested (and I do believe that those can be two separate things). However, my youngest son and his BFF are so close that if one of them was of the opposite gender, they'd be a couple. Even my son's fiance agrees with me on that. So, what would make them be a couple with them both being male? One is a good, Catholic-Italian-Puerto Rican boy, the other has barely attended church and describes himself as more of a Deist than anything else. The death of every female on earth might result with him being a couple, but they are pretty het guys. Who would so be all over each other if one of them was a woman.
So, now addressing the sexual relationship and romantic relationship being different things. Years ago, I was a regular participant in a chat room for an internet radio show. The host was gay, and most of the other chatters were, too. Some were bi (the host had a daughter from a marriage, but was divorced and at that time, had been with his partner for close to 10 years). The guys were very open and willing to answer questions. One guy didn't like anal sex, and only gave blow jobs because he liked getting them. He thought it was only fair to reciprocate. He never had any thoughts or feelings toward his oral sex partners that bordered near the romantic. He didn't want love or a relationship, he wanted to have his cock sucked. Period. This is something that I think women tend to have problems with - the concept of sex as being pure physical release, with no emotion. Hence the romance along with the sex in romance novels. We tend to write our slash stories the same way, even our PWP stories will feature men who are in a relationship, but just having sex for the heck of it. A PWP is just that - no plot, just a description of two men - in a relationship - having sex. Women also tend to have 'cleaner' sex than men, or I should say, to write it. There's a reason that porn movies have the money shots - men like that, they like doing it, they like seeing it, they like messy. Which can lead to some interesting problems when you have a couple where one is really into enjoying the messy and the other is horrified at messing up the 500 count Egyptian cotton sheets. Anal sex is messy. Women don't dwell on that, either. But, going back to the sex versus relationship - for most women, the two are together 'sexual relationship', for most men, they can be two totally separate things. So, yes, a man can be in love with another man, yet not want to immediately hop into the sack with him. But be more than willing to drop his pants while the other guy goes to his knees. Or might not like that, either, and just wants to spend time together, never crossing the sexual boundary - but those guys are probably going to be that way with other men, too.
I do like romance with my slash, or rather, I should say that I like love with my slash (grin). And again, romance and love are not always the same thing.
no subject
I'm thinking that the real history versus 'romance' history issue might be one of education. I kinda hate to use that term, because that implies that some people who read romance novels, especially Regency ones, might not be educated. What I mean is that there are people out there who know how to do research. People who were the ones in school who were always looking things up. The people who would go to a library and spend nearly as much time in the encyclopedia/reference area as in the fiction one. Then you have the people who weren't dumb, but didn't put forth the effort to learn more on their own. The ones who want their history handed to them, instead of having to go looking for it on their own. For people born and/or raised in the internet age, these would be the ones who have the 'it's on the internet, it must be true' mentality, regardless of the subject.
So, yes, SOME people who read Regency romance might come away thinking that they've been reading 'real' history. But, some will also be approaching it from the entertainment angle - they read for the pleasure, for the escape element. I do think that in the past 10 years or so, a lot of people have moved away from the escapism aspect of novels, TV shows and movies. They want things to be realistic and accurate. Movies get picked apart because an exploding ship in space made a sound. There's no creative license allowed, or perhaps not allowed, but not welcomed. And, I'm somewhat guilty of that. I've lost count of how many hours I've spent researching things that ended up being barely mentioned in a story, just because I wanted to be accurate (yes, I am that anal).
With Chris, I don't automatically associate being married with a child as more straight than gay. This is probably because over the years, I've met a few gay men who had been married and had kids. Gay, and not bi-sexual. For each of the men, they pretty much knew they were gay, but were conforming to what society/family/church expected of them, and so they married. I would expect that a similar attitude would have been present with many men in the 1800s - with some repressing their attraction to other men, and others sneaking around while being 'happily' married. And then you'd have the confirmed bachelors, who never seemed to go courting, but instead were loving and diligent sons, staying unmarried so they could take care of their parents. Or the men who found themselves giving in to society and marrying women who were flat as boards and more mannish in their mannerisms. When dealing with other time periods, we always run the risk of viewing it through modern lenses - as a genealogist, I run into that. There are some prominent genealogists who I look up to, and they all have versions of the same thing: that you cannot understand the past unless you know the context of the past. Why were records created at a certain time, what rights did women have when it came to owning property or inheriting, what rights did children born out-of-wedlock have? Answers to those questions are going to be different depending on not only where the events are happening, but also when they're happening.
Chris Larabee of Indiana (going with the idea that that is where he was from), by what we can tell of how he behaves and interacts with others, would have been brought up expected to sow some wild oats, then settle down, get married and have a family, preferably on the family farm. Buck was not raised with those expectations - his mother's occupation ensured that as long as he remained in the same geographic area, Buck would never be viewed as suitable marriage material. If Josiah had really been a Catholic priest, then marriage would have been off the table for him, and outside of a few musings and gazing at Maude and Emma, Josiah seems to be more non-sexual. I think you'd pegged it pretty well that Josiah fell more in love with the image of Emma, than with Emma, and has probably never been with a woman. J. D. would have been considered good marriage material, as would Nathan. Vin would not, nor would Ezra (in the eyes of society as a whole).
As for the 'sliding scale', I believe it's there, and I do agree with you on the chemistry aspect. But, and that's a big BUT, whether or not that chemistry would make someone move into sexual attraction/love/committed relationship depends on so many other variables. For instance, I dearly love my BFF. I've known her since I was 12, and I'm now in my early 50s. But, if she was a male, I would not be sexually interested in her, nor romantically interested (and I do believe that those can be two separate things). However, my youngest son and his BFF are so close that if one of them was of the opposite gender, they'd be a couple. Even my son's fiance agrees with me on that. So, what would make them be a couple with them both being male? One is a good, Catholic-Italian-Puerto Rican boy, the other has barely attended church and describes himself as more of a Deist than anything else. The death of every female on earth might result with him being a couple, but they are pretty het guys. Who would so be all over each other if one of them was a woman.
So, now addressing the sexual relationship and romantic relationship being different things. Years ago, I was a regular participant in a chat room for an internet radio show. The host was gay, and most of the other chatters were, too. Some were bi (the host had a daughter from a marriage, but was divorced and at that time, had been with his partner for close to 10 years). The guys were very open and willing to answer questions. One guy didn't like anal sex, and only gave blow jobs because he liked getting them. He thought it was only fair to reciprocate. He never had any thoughts or feelings toward his oral sex partners that bordered near the romantic. He didn't want love or a relationship, he wanted to have his cock sucked. Period. This is something that I think women tend to have problems with - the concept of sex as being pure physical release, with no emotion. Hence the romance along with the sex in romance novels. We tend to write our slash stories the same way, even our PWP stories will feature men who are in a relationship, but just having sex for the heck of it. A PWP is just that - no plot, just a description of two men - in a relationship - having sex. Women also tend to have 'cleaner' sex than men, or I should say, to write it. There's a reason that porn movies have the money shots - men like that, they like doing it, they like seeing it, they like messy. Which can lead to some interesting problems when you have a couple where one is really into enjoying the messy and the other is horrified at messing up the 500 count Egyptian cotton sheets. Anal sex is messy. Women don't dwell on that, either. But, going back to the sex versus relationship - for most women, the two are together 'sexual relationship', for most men, they can be two totally separate things. So, yes, a man can be in love with another man, yet not want to immediately hop into the sack with him. But be more than willing to drop his pants while the other guy goes to his knees. Or might not like that, either, and just wants to spend time together, never crossing the sexual boundary - but those guys are probably going to be that way with other men, too.
I do like romance with my slash, or rather, I should say that I like love with my slash (grin). And again, romance and love are not always the same thing.